I confess I bought myself an AR108 in my first year (£32 on EBay) but I do find I only use it occasionally. It depends a lot on the circuit and particularly on how many people there are on post.
A few times I've been working on my own at a point some way from the main post (often flagging) and then it can be extremely useful, and there's no-one to chat to anyway
. But other times and particularly when I'm in a group I often don't bother. There's usually plenty to learn from watching what's going on immediately around you.
OTOH if you do circuits/meetings which are not exactly over-marshalled it's probably not a bad idea to spend some time getting used to the radio traffic ready for the day when someone says "Here's a radio, you can manage PostX on your own can't you ?". And it can happen, possibly earlier than you might expect.
Steve